“You figured wrong. I’ll take chopsticks too.”
He brought me a set of chopsticks from the hostess station and then sat next to me. Small talk became a secondary concern after tasting the first mouthful of fried rice. I’d tried to make it at home—even went so far as to find a clone recipe online—but had never quite replicated the flavor. Maybe it had something to do with the indulgence of watching someone else prepare it for me.
“How is it?” he asked.
“Mmmmmm.” I swallowed. “Best fried rice ever.”
He grinned.
I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I was scraping the bottom of the rice bowl with my chopsticks. Tak was halfway done with his. He set the bowl and chopsticks on the table and turned to me.
“I don’t want to ruin your fried rice experience with a difficult conversation, but Jerry tells me Ebony might be in some trouble.”
I set my near-empty bowl down. “Tak, before I tell you what’s going on, I need you to understand. Ebony and my dad are the two most important people in my life, and I’d do anything for them. I came back to Proper City because of my dad’s heart attack. That scared me more than anything in my life. Now this thing with Blitz is affecting Ebony. She’s as much a part of my family as my dad. I want to help her, but I think she’s scared too—scared that something from her past, something she doesn’t want anybody to know—is going to come out and it’s going change the way people view her. I’m afraid of what the investigation is going to do to her.”
“Hey,” Tak said. He sandwiched his hands around mine. “Family is important. I know that more than most people. But sometimes you have turn your back on what they want in order to do what you think is right.”
I couldn’t imagine a situation when I’d need to turn my back on the people I loved. From my earliest memories, of my dad tending to my skinned knee when I was five, or dressing me in a Sound of Music costume for my first recital when I was fourteen, to the pots of coffee he brewed when I had to stay up all night studying for exams when I was in community college. I remembered how Ebony used her resources at Shindig to throw me the best tenth birthday party in Proper City, how she let me borrow her first bichon frise when I dressed as Little Bo Peep when I was twelve, and how she did my hair and makeup for my senior prom because she knew that’s what my own mother would have done if she hadn’t died.
Tears welled up in my eyes and I blinked them back so Tak wouldn’t notice. The air around us hung heavy with the scent of fried rice and the weight of his words. The silence was punctured by the sound of something falling to the ground by the hostess table.
Tak dropped my hands and stood up. “Who’s there?” he asked the darkness.
There was no reply. A shadow moved along the far wall of the restaurant, distorted by the low light that emanated from paper lanterns swaying in the entranceway. I reached out for Tak’s hand.
“The lanterns,” I whispered and pointed at the entrance. “The front door must be open.”
“Wait here.” He moved through the empty interior and out the front door. Seconds later, the door slammed shut and I was alone.
Chapter 11
AS SAFE AS I’d tricked myself into thinking I was when we arrived, now I felt a hundred times more scared. It was after midnight. I was alone in a restaurant where I had no business being. I didn’t know who had been inside with us or what they’d wanted. I was rooted to my chair as if I weighed a thousand pounds.
I crept toward the exit. Voices outside argued. Then silence. And then—bam! I ran outside and found Tak alone in the parking lot. His fists were balled up and he stood facing the Dumpster as if it were his opponent in a street brawl.
“Tak?” I asked. He was so focused on the trash bin that he didn’t hear me. “Tak,” I said again. In the distance, red and blue lights flashed. A police car approached and turned into the Hoshiyama parking lot. Its arrival snapped Tak’s concentration and he turned to look first at the police car and then at me.
“Wait here,” he said.
A door opened above me and I looked up. An older Japanese man stood on a small balcony above a narrow flight of stairs. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched Tak. I didn’t know if he saw me or not.
A police officer got out of her car. It took me a couple of seconds to recognize Detective Nichols from Blitz Manners’s party. She wore a dark blazer over a white shirt and black pants. She and Tak exchanged a few words. Their voices weren’t audible, but judging from their body language, they were exchanging more than a polite greeting. They turned in my direction and Tak pointed to me. I glanced up at the man on the balcony. He was watching me too. Tak called out my name. He waved me forward, and I joined him and the detective by the police car.
“Margo, this is Detective Nichols,” he said.